Brothers To The Bitter End

25

The next day Damian was carefully cleaning his locker. He had learned from his time in the League that the cleaner something was, the easier it was to convince people you were a good person. Apparently, "cleanliness was next to godliness." In the case of the League, this more often than not revolved around cleaning their katanas of blood, their hands of blood, their floors of . . . ok, there was a lot of blood. But what do you expect from an organization called the "League of Assassins?"

"Hi," a soft voice said from behind his locker door.

Damian frowned. No one approached him, at least not voluntarily. Sure, there were the occasional dares, though no one dared touch him after Damian had thrown one kid through the principal's door, but no one ever said "hi."

"Damian, right?" The voice continued. Damian partially closed his locker door to get a better look at the speaker. "We didn't really get the chance to talk yesterday. I'm Rachel." She extended her hand amiably. Damian elected to ignore the hand and go back to cleaning his locker and, more specifically, katana 57 aka Marc Antony. "Look, I think we kinda got started off on the wrong foot, so maybe we could start over?"

Damian sighed. Apparently the "silent treatment" wasn't going to work. "Listen, Roth, I don't know who put you up to this, and I quite frankly don't care. But as you can see, I'm rather busy, so just tell me what they dared you to do so I can go about my business faster."

"No one put me up to this," Rachel huffed. "I'm just trying to be friendly. We are classmates after all."

Damian closed and locked his locker and gave her a scathing glare. "Look, I know you're new here, so I'm going to cut you some slack and let you off with a warning: go away. I don't like people, I don't have friends, and I don't like it when the only time people approach me is because of dares." Damian ripped open his locker, got his books out, and slammed it back shut. "Good day." And with that, Damian stalked off to his first class.

Unfortunately, Rachel was persistent. Not only that, but she seemed to be in every single one of his classes. She even sat by him at lunch. "Hey, wasn't that history test hard?" She asked, plopping down across from Damian.

He groaned. "What do I have to do to make you go away?"

Rachel seemed puzzled. "But we're friends!"

Damian leaned across the table and got right in her face. "We. Are. Not. Friends." He took his tray and stalked off.

Rachel sighed as she watched him leave. This was going to be harder than she thought. She pulled out her phone. "Hey, guys, I'm going to need some help."
*******
Damian sighed in relief as he say Dick's car pull up. No, not the sports car, but his cop car. After he had managed to get around yesterday, the others had grudgingly agreed to let him get back to work. Dick's boss had been thrilled and had greeted the young man back with a stack of unsolvable cases.

"Dami, let's go!" Dick was standing half in, half out of his car. "You and I have a lot of work this afternoon." Damian grinned and began heading for the car, but he was cut off by two boys, one with a horrible haircut, the other with . . . green hair?

"Hi, Damian, right?" The boy with the bad haircut asked.

Before Damian could tell the two of them to get out of his face, in a very less than nice way, Rachel popped up, seemingly out of nowhere. "Hi, Damian. I see you've met my friends! This is Jaime," she pointed to bad haircut boy, "and Garfield." She motioned to the green haired boy.

"You can call me Gar." Garfield extended a hand amiably.

"Dami!" Dick honked the horn, frowning. Damian was usually itching to get out of school. So what was going on?

"Look," Damian began, but got no further.

"I thought we could all hang out this afternoon! Wouldn't that be fun?"  Rachel said excitedly. "Give us a chance to really get to know each other!"

Damian groaned loudly. "Look, as fun as that doesn't sound . . ."

"It'll be fun!" Jaime reiterated, his smile beginning to look rather strained. The sound of a slamming car door could be heard in the distance.

"I have things to do," Damian stated firmly. "So if you'll excuse me . . ."

"But what could be more important than hanging out with friends?" Rachel practically screeched. She reached out and grabbed his arm, but before she could do anything else, a hand clamped on her shoulder.

"Is there a problem here?" Dick asked, his voice dangerously low. He had hoped that Damian had made some friends and that was why he was dawdling, but that was clearly not the case.

"No, no, no problem, officer." Garfield stammered slightly. Damian almost laughed. He supposed Dick must be an imposing figure, because although he was shorter than Todd, he did tower over the rest of them. He was also obviously fit without an ounce of unnecessary fat on him. But seeing a kid almost his own age be scared of the man that still watched My Little Pony (admittedly, they all did), it was almost enough to make Damian double over laughing. Luckily for all of them, he had more self control than that.

"Good." Dick's words snapped Damian back to the present. "Come on, Damian. We've got a stack of cases waiting at the office."

Damian pushed through the teens and walked beside Dick back to the car. "You mean you haven't solved them all yet?"

Dick snorted. "You haven't seen the stack. I swear if I wasn't there, that office couldn't run for two months!"

"How big is the stack?" Damian asked curiously. 

"Let me put it this way," Dick smirked at his little brother, "if you stack all of your katanas end to end reaching for the sky, that would probably be half of this stack."

Damian cackled. "Let's go solve some cases then!"
********
As they watched the car drive away, Jaime turned to Rachel. "Great plan, Rach. We're still at square number one, that brat hates us, and now his cop big brother is on the alert for us!"

Garfield shook his head. "It's not her fault. Who knew that it was going to be this difficult?"

Rachel sighed. "Guys, I don't know what to do. We have a mission, and it seems to be failing at every turn."

"Why don't we kidnap him?" Jaime asked.

"Have you seen the kid's record? He'd have us knocked out in three seconds flat!" Garfield abhorred the thought of taking that little twerp on in hand to hand combat.

"Maybe . . . but one thing that could work in our favor is they don't know who we are." Rachel put a fist towards the center of the group and the boys followed suit. "Titans, go!" The three laughed and left the schoolyard with their arms linked.

Unbeknownst to the group of teens, a tall, imposing figure had seen the whole thing from his perch on the top of the school. "Of course, my little ducklings, you were wrong about one thing: someone does know who you are, and I will not hesitate to take you down." The man ran a hand through his dark hair, a white streak from his dip in the Lazarus Pit the only thing marring it from being jet black. He replaced his red helmet onto his head with all the dignity befitting a hero. He stared off into the distance dramatically. Unfortunately, a laugh broke the mood.

"You know they can't see or hear you, right?" The voice cackled.

Jason, for it was Jason who had seen the Titans, turned at the voice behind him. "Don't you have work, Roy?" He spat. He hated it when he was being dramatic and someone interrupted it.

Roy, who was in his police uniform, grinned at the disgruntled man. "For your information, I am. An anonymous source reported a suspicious someone standing on the school roof, and they sent me to investigate."

"Let me guess, the anonymous source was Dick?"

Roy grinned even wider. "Actually, it was Wally. Apparently he thought you were going to be dramatic and he wanted it on tape." Roy held up his phone. "Have fun!" He hollered as he ran back down the rooftop stairs and into the school below.

Jason sighed. "Being the hero is no easy task . . ."

"I can still hear you!" Roy hollered up the stairwell.